


To Be Or Not To Be

by MissGuenever



Series: Luxury and Loss [7]
Category: Leverage
Genre: Battlestar Galactica References, Books, Chinese Language, Firefly References, Gen, Ghost In The Wire, Hacking, Hacking is not just typing!, Orange Soda, Star Trek References
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-21
Updated: 2020-12-03
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:55:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27650977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissGuenever/pseuds/MissGuenever
Summary: This is in the same 'verse as my –Luxuries & Loss; it’s Hardison’s view on life.  An idea I got while reading Kevin Mitnick’s biography/auto-biography (he had a ghost writer)Ghost In The Wire.  I see Hardison as a much cooler (and less dickish) version of Kevin Mitnick.  Sorry, geeks everywhere – I know that he’s an incredibly smart accomplished person; but, Kevin Mitnick is not someone I’d want to have a beer with.
Series: Luxury and Loss [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1471631
Kudos: 6





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to everyone so much for reading, reviewing, and favoriting my other Leverage fics! Ohhh, and thanks to Voetsek007 (my glorious and often put-upon husband) for suggesting the book. And again to Gaben for being my fearless beta; who is never afraid to tell me something sounds stupid. And is willing to read something multiple times!

To be or not to be; that was what Hardison felt like when that first lawyer had told him to stop hacking. Well, phreaking to be exact. At the time he’d been accessing the phone company so that he could get free internet access. No playing online; no talking with his friends; no nuthin… It would be like not breathing. And then his foster family at that particular time, before Nana, had taken away his computer. They were religious do-gooders who thought that removing the source of temptation would make it all better. Needless to say, he hadn’t lasted too long with that particular placement. His tall geeky self, a garbage bag of clothes, and his precious computer had all ended up at Nana’s.

Nana had understood his need for knowledge. She might not have understood why he needed to find it and she really didn’t agree with his methods, which had ended up with his ass getting beat more than once; but she understood. It was a quest; kind of like World of Warcraft, but way cooler. Way, way cooler!

Hardison huddled over his keyboard, phone at his elbow, as he attempted to work another quick-fix miracle for Nate and the team. “Grrr…” The hacker growled to himself, didn’t the man realize these things took time. Hacking a target wasn’t a five minute thing. There was no ‘Boom, and I’m in.’ There were security protocols to figure out, accesses to gain, passwords to discover. It wasn’t just a little bit of typing on a keyboard. He hadn’t gotten access to GenGrow in ten minutes; even though it had kind of looked like that. No, there’d been a couple days with no sleep searching out information and winding his way around a maze kind of like a mouse in one of those weird psychology experiments.

Hardison picked up the phone and called one of the secretaries at the firm they were targeting. That was one thing he’d learned from the Jehovah’s Witness’; how to work a phone! And that was one thing he was going to need to need right now, because he didn’t have two weeks to get in. He really didn’t have two days either. It would be really nice to have this done today, and be able to go to the gym and meet with his personal trainer. Alec looked down at the clock on the screen; they were having a team meeting this evening and… ‘Oh crap! Two hours! That’s when I’m supposed to meet Bob.’ He’d started going to the gym when Sophie had started working out with Eliot and she’d told him that he needed to learn self-defense. And there wasn’t no way on this green earth that he was letting Eliot near him. It would give the guy an even bigger head! Yep, he really needed to speed this thing up; it was the only way he was going to be able to go the gym and have system access prior to the meeting. 

Finally, after three rings someone finally picked up. “Hi, Renee? Yes, this is Abdul down in IT. How you doing today?” They bantered for a minute about the crappy weather that she was having up in Chicago. After a couple of minutes of small talk, which always irritated Alec; that he could talk up people on the phone like there was no tomorrow; but, a women in the flesh, that caused him to sweat and freeze up. “Renee, I need to run a script so we can add the newest security patches onto your computer; because we’re having problems with hackers attacking our machines.”

“Oooh, that’s bad!”

Alec could almost hear her eyes get wide, and she was like putty in his hands, and after a few more minutes of chitchat and carefully placed directions, Alec had access to her computer. He also learned that one of the interns was a royal pain-in-the-ass and had come running into Mr Berkowitz’s office twice in the last month because people were being mean to her. And that Jamese, the PA for Ms Waters, just found out that she was having a little girl and they were going to throw her a baby shower next week. Oh yes, these were exciting days! Exciting days indeed!

Hanging up the phone Alec slugged a couple shots of orange soda, and a big grin split his face. Not only had Renee helped him put a crack into their server system which he could exploit, she’d opened a frigging super highway! He had access to everything: their password files, the storage servers, everything! It was like Christmas all over again. It was almost as good as the Bering Industries job!  



	2. Geeks In Babeland

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, this was supposed to be a one shot; but, it didn’t quite work that way. So here is part two: Geeks in Babeland! Or something like that. **Gaben** , thank you so much for being the world’s greatest beta!

To be or not to be, that wasn’t a question Alec had ever had to ask; he’d always known that he would be a geek. From the time he was little Hardison would take video games over a pick-up basketball game in the park. He’d rather spend hours buried in the stacks in the library trying to track down information he could use to hack a password, instead of playing cops and robbers with the rest of the kids at Nana’s house.

It had driven Nana mad; his comfortableness with being alone. Actually, it was better called a preference for solitude. That was how that poet in school had phrased it. His love of video games and computers had gotten him here. Here to LA, where he’d gotten his wicked cool loft, a sound system to beat all sound systems, and the best computing power available outside of the NSA!

“ _Ha! Huh choo-shung tza-jiao duh tzang-huo_! Filthy Fornicators of Livestock!” The hacker yelled at the top of his lungs as he crushed the ogre he’d been fighting with for the last two hours. “Boo yah!”

“ _Liou coe shway duh biao-tze huh hoe-tze duh ur-tze_! Stupid Son of a Drooling Whore and a Monkey!” Came right back at him over the game interface.

“Holy crap!” Alec thought to himself; no one knew Mandarin – at least not the Pinyin that was spoken by Browncoats. Could this ogre, Boomer84 be his Kaylee? Starbuck? His Seven Of Nine? His Amanda Darieux?

Mmmm… Starbuck. The hacker’s thought train continued down its runaway course. The way she looked kicked back smoking a stogie wearing one of those weird Battlestar Galactica tank tops, flying a Viper. Or well, doing just about anything! “ _Nǐ huì shuō pǔtōnghuà_? You speak Mandarin?”

“ _Méiyǒu_. No”

Alec could almost see the shrug. The pause after the words let Alex know that Boomer84 was probably using a translator of some type. Well that wasn’t bad, his Mandarin was _bùshì hěn dà_ , not great. And that was putting it pretty nicely.

Watching Starbuck on television was pretty much like the wet dream he’d had when he’d first seen Seven Of Nine on Star Trek Voyager! “Mmm… Mama, she is all woman!” Hardison dropped the controller and let himself think about the gloriousness of all that was Starbuck, Seven of Nine, and Amanda!

Blonde bombshells, all of them. All three were tall, slim, athletic, and more than a little crazy; but, crazy in their own special way. They never really fit in; but, you needed them around. And more to the point; you actually missed them when they weren’t around. Kaylee was cute; but, she was all kinds of… Well, normal! Not like Starbuck or Parker.

Alec reached out to grab his bottle of orange soda only to find out that it was empty. “ _Shiong mao niao_. Panda piss.” He sighed stretching and feeling his joints pop after sitting in one position for so long. He stood up and trotted over to the fridge to get another bottle only to find it empty. He’d just bought soda yesterday… Twelve bottles of the good stuff; the stuff Nana would never buy! It was too expensive.

Stretching up to his full six foot one height, Alec looked out the picture windows which showed the skyline of Los Angeles and grinned. Being rich was just fracking awesome! Fracking awesome, and well… Iceland had never known what had hit them; and well that plus some market manipulations and a few other things had given him a really nice nest egg.

Snapping his fingers the hacker did a little happy dance. He might be out of his primary stash of orange soda; but, he still had his back-up stock. Diving into the bottom cupboard, he grabbed the last bottle from his back-up stash, clutched it to his chest and did his happy dance.   
Happy dance!

**Author's Note:**

> Bùshì hěn dà -- Not great  
> Huh choo-shung tza-jiao duh tzang-huo! -- Filthy Fornicators of Livestock!  
> Nǐ huì shuō pǔtōnghuà? --You speak Mandarin?  
> Shiong mao niao -- Panda piss
> 
> So now that you’ve read absolutely stupendous short – go on and read some of my other wicked cool fics. Short and long, I’ve written them both. Enjoy. And thank you for reading!


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